1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an artificial bone template selection system which selects an artificial bone template suitable for the part of bone to be supplemented by artificial bone out of a plurality of artificial bone templates prepared in advance. This invention further relates to an artificial bone template display system which displays artificial bone templates which have been prepared, an artificial bone template storage system which stores a plurality of artificial bone templates prepared in advance, and an artificial bone template recording medium for recording thereon artificial bone templates.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the orthopedic surgery, the oral surgery and the like, when a patient loses a part of a bone due to disease or accident or by a surgical removal as treatment for malignant tumor, the lost part of the bone has been supplemented by his or her own bone of another part.
Recently, artificial bone (artificial hard tissue) of stainless steel, cobalt-chrome series alloy, metal such as titanium, aluminum or zirconium, oxide of these metals, ceramic such as apatite, or composite material of these materials has been put into practical use as substitution for the lost part of the bone.
Artificial bone which is to be embedded in place of the lost part of the bone is produced on the basis of a standard model which is selected, on the basis of the shape of the part to be replaced by the artificial bone, out of a plurality of standard models which have been prepared, in advance, in different shapes.
Conventionally, the standard models are stored in the form of real templates representing the contours of the standard models (e.g., templates formed of transparent plastic sheets), and the real templates are superposed on an image of the lost part of the bone in sequence and whether each of the templates conforms to the lost part of the bone is visually checked.
However, since the standard models are prepared at intervals of 1 mm of the diameter of the bone head (the head of the bone) or the length of the bone shaft or the bone holder and at intervals of 1° of the angle between the bone shaft and the bone holder, the number of the standard models or the real templates is numerous, and accordingly, to select one template in the conventional way is a time-consuming and labor-consuming process.
Further, since being manually superposed on the image of the lost part of the bone in a limited time interval, each template cannot be accurately aligned with the image of the lost part and an optimal standard model or template cannot be constantly selected.
Further, since numerous templates must be kept at hand, management of the templates is troublesome.